Friday, August 24, 2012

Weekly Report for August 20-24, 2012

Last weekend we tore apart the school room and got part of it put back together, so we dodged books and a strange space plan this week ... but got school done anyway. Wednesday, we had the opportunity to go to a Columbus Clippers game (minor league baseball) and were up way past bedtimes, so we slept in Thursday and Friday. Hmmm. We still got lessons done those days. I did a slight modification of our schedule and have N-boy doing his piano practice while M-girl is doing her lessons and R-girl will do her piano practice while N-boy has his lessons with Mommy. R-girl & N-boy simply need more separation so M-girl gets my quality attention, not distracted attention.

Phonics:

R-girl: is still going quickly through the r-controlled vowels. They offer her no challenge when she's paying attention.

Assigned Reading:

M-girl: is getting closer to finishing On the Banks of Plum Creek. She has asked that she not do another Little House book next. Any suggestions?

N-boy: started Farmer Boy this week. He complained at first, but seems to be doing pretty well with it and is enjoying it.

R-girl: started Little House in the Big Woods (see a theme? [grin]). She took two days to read the first chapter, but that's OK.

Math:

M-girl: is working on two digit numbers and it is super easy for her. They're sneaking some multiplication in here and there which is great.

N-boy: reviewed the first week of Year 2 today with Lesson 5. He was mostly reviewing addition up to 20.

R-girl: started adding up to 9s this week.

Logic:

M-girl: worked on several pages of logic. I see improvement every day in the quality of her independent work.

N-boy: didn't work on any this week.

R-girl: has been enjoying Lollipop Logic pages in addition to her Mindbenders Warm-up questions.

Grammar:

M-girl: continues to diagram adverbs. Today she learned that whether the adverb is before or after the verb, you still diagram it the same way.

N-boy: started the scary list of prepositions this week.

R-girl: has been working on the Days of the Week as proper nouns.

Writing:

M-girl: continues to improve here. The summarizing is a challenge for her, giving either too much or too little detail. I read some of the sample summaries to her out of the teacher book and that seemed to help some.

N-boy: did his copywork in cursive today. It took about three times as long as when he prints, but was neater and he was so proud of himself. He's working on The Light Princess. I bought that at conference for R-girl this year, we should read it.

Spelling:

M-girl: is moving right along with no challenge.

N-boy: is almost done with Level B! Yay! He's started the End of Level Test today!

Latin:

M-girl: finished Chapter 3 today. I learned that an "error" is "wandering away from the truth." She needs to work more on her chants, but is doing well with her vocabulary flash cards.

N-boy: pulling out the flash cards and practicing them every day has made a huge difference. He's ready for the lesson which teaches counting from 6-10 now.

Penmanship:

M-girl: pretty much writes everything in cursive. She's still learning capitals, B and P today, but her writing is lovely :)

N-boy: is doing very well. He tends to print except for during penmanship, but I've been encouraging him to use more cursive. He's been working on R.

R-girl: learned l this week.

History: we read about the expansion of the Islamic Empire. We also listened to a Jim Weiss CD about the Renaissance. A bit out of order, but we all enjoyed it.

Science: we're adding reading Signs and Seasons to our science which I found for half price as the company goes out of business. :(

I want to make a sundial to reinforce some of this lesson.

Geography: we read about seasons and how the earth's orbit of the sun is responsible for them.

Art: I can't say we did any art this week other than the children found the basket of coloring books and activity books and have been going to town using them in their free time.

Read Alouds: we read some more of Pinnochio - just a chapter - and started Archimedes and the Door of Science for our lunchtime read. We finished the Circle of Blessing chapter in Parables of Nature.

Bible: we completed Covenantal Catechism Book 1 reading about the births of John the Baptist and our Lord Jesus Christ. I should write a review, if I do I'll link back here. We read some more of The Mighty Acts of God by Starr Meade about Jesus calling the fishers of men. I'm also saying that this was the last week we're studying Matthew 5:1-12. The children have it down well enough and next we're going to work on Philippians 2 at least 5-11 and maybe more. I may try to do a Memory Work post next week.